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Wednesday, May 31, 2017

What I Ate Wednesday

I'm finally back with a What I Ate Wednesday post. If you normally visit the blog for vegan food ideas, thanks for sticking with me. I was caught up in the busiest of springs. We were beautifying our dining room over a 6-week period for the One Room Challenge. You can see the big dining room reveal here! That's in addition to all the parenting stuff that comes along with spring. It feels like winter is for hibernation and we try to fit EVERYTHING into the short weeks of spring. Basketball tournaments, dance competitions, birthday parties - it's all good fun but it doesn't exactly leave time or energy for the greatest meals.

To tell the truth, not much of our food over the past couple of months felt photo-worthy. And time for picture-taking was at a premium. Not that I'm creating genius meals now. I fully believe that vegan food preparation can be easy and quick. Certainly you can prepare more elaborate dishes (with lots of vegetable cutting involved!) when you have the time and energy, but on regular days, we keep it simple. Here's a sample day of easy vegan eats - what I had this past Monday actually. The kids went off to school and I just thought, "pancakes." Why not make a stack of pancakes to enjoy all by my lonesome? Right? A perfect way to ease into Monday. So I made vegan pancakes with a light touch of cinnamon and a bunch of berries. And then I drowned those pancakes in maple syrup. Because that's the way to do it.

We had a lot of salad greens in the fridge, so I went for a simple lunch of mixed greens topped with cucumber, raspberries, chickpeas, dried cranberries and pumpkin seeds. My go-to dressing is a mix of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt (like my Italian mother-in-law does it).

Of course salad for lunch wasn't enough for me. A bit later I was cleaning out my purse and found a crushed and slightly melted Vega peanut butter and chocolate bar at the bottom. I also found some Mott's Fruitsations veggie and berry gummies (meant for the kids). I ate it all. Not the healthiest lunch choice, but I did have that salad earlier. It's all good, right?

For dinner, I decided to put together a simple vegan bowl. This is one of my fave things to do for dinner on a weeknight. I made some fresh hummus first. Then I tossed some cubes of extra-firm tofu in a pan with olive oil, Bragg's liquid aminos and garlic powder. I shredded carrots, cut up red peppers, steamed some broccoli and sliced up avocados. I put it all in a bowl with mixed greens and topped it with a quick homemade peanut sauce made with peanut butter and coconut milk. Easy, healthy and delish.

There has to be dessert, don't ya think? President's Choice has this new (I think) dairy-free coconut milk chocolate ice cream. It's quite smooth on the tongue, really creamy and tasty. I topped it with a little blast of coconut whipped cream and a few raspberries. Oh, and a few chocolate chips! Because double chocolate kind of speaks for itself.

What type of meals have you been eating this spring? Complex? Simple? Comforting?

8 comments:

I'm with you on the Winter hibernation and slacking in the food photos. It's much easier when the days are longer. And I LOVE making big bowls filled with goodies for dinner, probably one of my favorite meals.

Throw together "buddha" type dinner bowls are my favorite. Delicious, AND super fast and easy if you have the ingredients on hand. So that's a triple win. You reminded me to start putting berries or fruit in my salads again. I always forget how delicious this is. Yay for a fellow Torontonian!

I want to do more and more dinner bowls like this. My family will no doubt grow tired of it though. ;) Fast and easy is the kind of food we're looking for. :) With regards to the berries - yes! Let's put them on everything while they are plentiful, right? Cheers fellow Torontonian! And thank you!

Aww, you're sweet - I would definitely make us a BIG stack of pancakes if you were close enough to pop in for breakfast! There are some pancake recipes on the blog, if you click the recipe section at the top of the page and then do a wee search for pancakes. :)

Hi! I'm Joann, a Toronto, Canada freelance writer and mother of two kids and two beagle-mix rescue pups. Inspiration is all around us, but how often do we miss it as we speed through our days crossing things off our lists? Grab a cup of tea and join me in exploring the art in everyday life, including diy, decor, books and lots of easy-to-make, family-friendly vegan food.